As my long-time readers know, my publisher cancelled my Seven Deadly Sins series after two books. While some readers loved the supernatural thriller series, it didn’t find its audience — unlike my more successful crime thrillers. Publishing is a business — I get that — but I was still disappointed because I loved this series and I loved these characters. I put it aside and started the Lucy Kincaid series — which is still going strong. The 12th book, MAKE THEM PAY, will be out in March!
While writing these two books nearly killed my career — and I don’t say that lightly — at the time I began writing ORIGINAL SIN in early 2009, I was burned out. I had written 12 romantic suspense novels in a row — all over 100,000 words. While each was very different in terms of character and story, ranging from cops to FBI agents to writers to a former stripper; from serial killers to stalkers to human trafficking to eco-terrorism; they were still structured fairly similarly and I wrote many on very short deadlines. Don’t get me wrong — I love those books (and in fact re-read several of them over Christmas break because I needed to research some of my older characters for a potential story I’m writing) — but I felt stuck. I needed to do something to re-ignite the spark.
Writing something with few rules in a wholly new world was both cathartic and creative. I needed something completely different to regain my love of writing. So while the Seven Deadly Sins series didn’t do as well as I would have liked, it saved me personally. I rekindled my romance with writing. In fact, I love writing more now than I did at the beginning of my career — maybe because I learned to not take anything for granted–including my muse. I probably won’t write another supernatural thriller anytime soon — though I would love to — but I’m still very, very proud of the world I created.
“Deliver Us From Evil” was a prequel to the Seven Deadly Sins series. I wrote it for an anthology in 2008 and it’s now being re-issued by itself in ebook. It’s a long novella (45,000 words) and only $2.99. If you haven’t read it, check it out — while it’s a prequel to the series, I didn’t write it initially as the beginning of anything. It’s a complete story and I hope you enjoy it. (In fact, I like this cover quite a bit! Thanks Pocket Books!) 🙂
Oh — and even though my publisher cancelled the Seven Deadly Sins, I self-published the third and final book in the series. MORTAL SIN is rather epic — the length of 2 books — but it wraps up most of the loose threads I’d introduced. For more information about the complete series, they are all listed on my website here.